Jessie nodded again, feeling her stomach start the dance of the great b.u.t.terfly. How could this woman be both so calming and so scary at the same time? "I want to know what's happening."

Ceara nodded and relit the candle she had knocked over. Incense wafted through the small cabin, smelling of lilac and cloves. She inhaled deeply and locked eyes with Jessie. The room became quiet and still. When Ceara finally spoke, her voice was low and soft. "When you opened the door, you stepped through a fold in the fabric of time."

"I went back in time?"

Ceara raised her white eyebrows. "What makes you think it was back?"

62 *63.

Jessie frowned. "Because there was this huge bonfire far away."

Ceara grinned. "You are remembering. Good."

Jessie sat back and ran her hand through her hair. "I guess I am. I mean it sure feels like a memory."

"It is. You see, most cultures who believe like us, know that souls have memory. Eternal memories. They don't just live here with us, die, and then go to heaven or h.e.l.l, as the Christians believe."

"Is that what this is all about then? Religion and time?"

Ceara shook her head. "Neither. It's about life, and the soul's approach to the living of that life. This is about something far deeper than tripping through the past like some time-traveling tourist. This is about your soul . . . your soul and the people who have housed that same soul over the millennia. You have been invited by a past self to a place and time that must want or need something from you. The question is, are you interested in helping?"

Jessie was hooked. Interested? She was coming out of her clothes with excitement, fear and trepidation. She had had a memory of something she had never done, she now knew things she didn't know she knew, and that void in her heart that had been there since birth was suddenly vibrating with life. "Interested is an understatement, Ceara.

All my life I've felt like I had no purpose, no reason for being. I've done drugs, alcohol, s.e.x, even shoplifting. I've felt lost my entire life. For the first time in my life, I feel alive, and I don't even know why."

"But you want to know."

"I do."

"And you're willing to listen and leave your preconceived notions outside."

"I'll leave my underwear outside if it helps me understand what is happening."

This made Ceara laugh. "Tell me, what do you know about past lives or the transmigration of souls?"

"You mean, like reincarnation?"

"Well, not exactly, but close enough for now."

"To be honest, I've never really given it any thought."

"I see. Well, we believe-"

62 *63.

"Who's we?"

"Those of us who know. We believe the soul is on eternal time, and that time, as we know it, has a far different rhythm and pace than what we humans measure on a day-to-day basis. Eternal time is a much different idea because it's not linear. Scientists think time runs up and down a line, like a ruler, but the truth is, they don't really know."

Jessie leaned forward, her hair cascading across the table.

"When scientists do not know or cannot prove something, they spend all their time trying to disprove it. Any theory that cannot be proven scientifically suddenly is not true. So far, no one has been able to measure time accurately or even figure out how it operates."

"I had a teacher once who believed the time line was an inaccurate model for how time operates."

"Indeed. There are hundreds of doc.u.mented instances when someone knows something they shouldn't be able to know. We believe this knowledge comes from the soul's memory."

Jessie shook her head. "You've lost me."

"Ever read stories about five-year-olds able to play Mozart? Or seven-year-old violinists symphonically superior to people who spent most their lives training? How about the dozens of people who wake up from comas fluent in a language they've never studied?"

Jessie's mouth hung open as she nodded. She remembered Wendy reading something to her out of People Magazine once about an eight- year-old chess player who'd beaten a world champion. "Those stories are incredible."

"Incredible yes, and also very true. The question everyone's asking is, how. Well, there are many of us who know how. It is the soul's memory remembering things it did in another time and another place.

What other answer is there for kids who can graduate from college at eleven, or play Beethoven before even having lessons? Or even more incredibly, kids who can give you accurate directions to a place they've never been? The Christians would call it a miracle."

"It does sorta seem that everything we don't understand is either a curse or a miracle."

"Yes. In terms of understanding time, we are in the Dark Ages. Did *

64 *65.

you know that most of the world's people do not believe the soul lives one life and then goes to heaven or h.e.l.l? The majority of the world outside Christendom agrees that the soul moves on and takes with it fragments of memories."

"So, you're saying that my soul is remembering something from a past life."

Ceara nodded slightly, her cool blue eyes studying Jessie. "And it's clearly trying to prompt you to remember more. Your soul is not your own, my dear. You have shared it with dozens of others, and someone from your past is trying to get you to remember more."

"How? How can they do that?"

"By coming through time and prodding your soul to remember.

You left the seam and went outside of your own time. You went somewhere, Jessie, and returned with fragments of memories from that time. Suddenly, you were remembering things you did not know you knew. You may not have known them, but your soul does. It remembered. Think of all the other thousands of things you know but do not know how you know."

"Just thinking about it makes my head spin."

"But there is so much more to it, Jessie. You see, the key isn't just in our eternal souls; the key is also in understanding time and how it moves." Ceara pulled one of her scarves off and set it in a straight line on the table. "We're taught that time is like this. We study time lines in school, but we don't really know for a fact that time moves only forward along a straight line. It's a guess. Just like the pre-Renaissance people guessed that the earth was flat. Well, sure, that's how it appears when you look into the horizon, but we now know that's not true.

Well, time as a straight line is also not true. If it was, it would go against all other defining principles of life."

"Such as?"

"All of the other cycles of life." Taking the scarf, Ceara put it in a circle so that both ends were touching. "Our world operates on cycles.

The seasons, our periods, the moon, weather, and life and death are all cyclical. The most fundamental aspects of our culture, of life itself, run in cycles. Why wouldn't time?"

64 *65.

Jessie inched forward. "So, if the soul is eternal and is capable of retaining memories of earlier lives, and time is not linear, then are you telling me it's possible that we can actually go to another place in time?"

"Not in your body, no, but your soul? Yes, and I believe that is what's happening to you. I believe you've found one of the seams, and your soul slipped back into the body of whoever had it back then.

Perhaps you were called, perhaps you merely stumbled upon a memory you did not know you had, but something drew you to that place."

"No way," Jessie whispered softly. "My soul went somewhere without me?"

"Without your body, yes. Without your conscious being, yes. Your soul has been housed in a variety of bodies in a variety of ages. When you step through a portal, your body stays here, and your soul returns to the body it possessed then. In effect, it slips back into itself."

"So you're saying my soul traveled to this other time because someone called to me and invited me."

Ceara nodded. "Jessie, the person who shares your soul is trying to get you to remember something."

"How can you be so sure? How do you know I just haven't fallen through the rabbit hole and I'm the one who has started it all?"

Ceara leaned back and steepled her fingers. "Because you had no concept of eternal souls, of time, or time travel. You did not call. You were beckoned."

Jessie had felt beckoned. She still felt beckoned, as though there were a voice in the back of her head calling her name. It was eerie and exciting all at once. "And I answered. I opened whatever you keep calling it."

"I call it a portal, but those who study time travel refer to it as a seam. Some of them believe the UFOs people have seen are merely beings slipping in and out of these seams."

"It all sounds so science-fiction."

Ceara nodded slightly. "The idea of heart transplants, of artificial insemination, of skin grafting, of stepping onto the moon, of helicopters and missiles, once seemed fantastical, too, didn't they? But *

66 *67.

they did happen. If Michelangelo had been told about digital cameras and color printers, he'd have mocked the notion. Just because the idea seems ludicrous at the time does not mean it cannot happen. You came to Oregon to a house with a seam and a spirit who called your name.

Does it have to be so hard to believe?"

Jessie sat quietly gathering her thoughts, questions, and many suppositions as to what to do now. Being called to the past was one thing . . . answering that call was something entirely different.

"I don't want to be a guinea pig here, Ceara, you know, with the press-"

"No! This is not something for anyone else to know, Jessie. You could put your family in great danger. You could find yourself facing a team of doctors wanting to dissect your mind. You could also be putting those people trusting you in danger."

"I get the picture."

"When Da Vinci was trying to make the airplane, many thought he had lost his wits. What's important for you to understand is that whoever is calling you from the past is alive in his or her time. Do not put them in danger by feeling the need to share this."

"Like anyone would believe me."

"You never know."

"I'm supposed to be remembering something and I have no idea what that is. Can't you hypnotize me or something? Do one of those past life regressions?"

"Much of what is brought out during hypnosis comes from selective memories. Many mediums try, and I'm sure many succeed, but I believe there is too much working in the subconscious to know whether or not it is the soul revealing itself, or if the other layers of the mind are at work. It is for that reason that I, myself, do not do past life regressions."

Jessie ran her hand through her hair again and sighed. "Why can't I remember? Am I stupid or something?"

"Can you tell me what you ate on the fourth day of your third year?"

"Of course not."

66 *67.

"Why not?"

"Because it's impossible to remem-oh." Jessie nodded again. "If my soul's been around a long time, there are a h.e.l.l of a lot of memories to sort through, huh?"

"More than you can imagine. And if your soul has come for a reason, it must first become accustomed and comfortable in this body in this time. It is not easy to go into eternal time where your soul exists and tap into the soul memory."

"Then all of us carry our pasts around inside us?"

Ceara stared into the candle flame and nodded slowly. "And we do not just carry past memories, either. Remember, my dear, time is not on a continuum."

"It's not hard to accept the past part, but how can you carry the memory of something that hasn't happened yet?"

Blowing the candle so that it jumped and flickered, Ceara leaned back. "Just because it hasn't happened on this plane, at this time, doesn't mean it hasn't happened yet."

"Whoa, now you've really lost me."

"Take Leonardo Da Vinci again. The man envisioned the airplane four hundred years before it was invented. He actually invented the parachute."

"No way."

Ceara nodded. "Now, can anyone reasonably explain how it is that a man would invent the parachute four hundred years before it was needed? Did Da Vinci remember a memory from another life? Because surely, if we believe in past lives, then how can we deny an existence of future ones as well?"

"In for a penny, I guess." Jessie sighed loudly. As bizarre as this conversation was, it all felt so . . . real, and real was important to a person who had spent too much of her youth in an unreal state.

"Look at the pyramids. It took the Egyptians twenty years to build the great pyramid at Giza, yet, even with our advanced technology, we would be hard-pressed to do the same today. How come? What did they know that we still do not know? Did they get their knowledge from somewhere in our future? And what of Galileo and Copernicus, *

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Shakespeare and Champollion?"

"Champ, who?"

"Champollion. He deciphered the Rosetta Stone after almost twenty years and dozens of other attempts by men far more brilliant than he. Why him, and why then? Was that a miracle? Were his investigative skills better than everyone else's? Or was he just in touch with memories most of us would deny having? The list goes on and on of people who did spectacular things well before they should have been able to. Where do you think their knowledge came from?"